Sesame (Sesamunm indicum) is an annual plant of the Pedaliaceae family, grown widely in tropical and subtropical areas and have a small (˜354 MB) diploid (2n=26) genome. Although sesame is considered to be one of the important and oldest of the oilseed plants as it has been under cultivation in Asia for over 5000 years sesame is a crop of developing countries due to its shattering capsules where the crop must harvest manually for preventing losing the seeds, thus requires intensive manual labor. The first and foremost obstacle to complete mechanization is the dehiscence nature of its capsules. Even though some breeding efforts were done during the last seventy years in order to solve it through single gene mutations (ID, GS) and even a combination of few genes (ND and IND varieties), still the majority of the world's sesame (over 99%) is dehiscent (shattering) type.
Accordingly, there exists a need for improved sesame lines and breeding methods for shatter resistant capsules.